What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Sam Powell, Zach Elliott, Tom Schweizer, Dennis LaRue, and Michelle King.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
97 - Intentional Living - At a Time That Makes a Difference
Join us as we explore the importance of living intentionally with purpose and the courage to overcome fear and regret. Reflecting on our journey through books like "Solve for Happy" and "Intentional Living," we discuss how these works have reshaped our perspectives on happiness and personal growth. We emphasize the value of taking action to live our intentions out loud and share practical insights for making every day a day well-lived. Let this episode inspire you to carry forward the lessons learned into the next year, ensuring each day is a testament to a life lived with intent and joy.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Russo and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are living out loud the pages of the books on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here with my co-host and friend, sam Powell. I cannot believe, sam, that this is the last episode of this series and really of the year I know it's crazy to think about.
Speaker 1:Right, when we sat down last year and thought through what we wanted to talk about and I like I asked you the question I was like, well, what is it that you think people want to talk about?
Speaker 1:And you're like I just want to be happy, like I think people just want to be happy, and so we're like, all right, then let's go explore, explore happiness. And so I have learned so much through these books and I think it has really changed my perspective on life, on what happiness really truly means for me and looks like and how to make that. You know, a daily thing here and you know, like, as we're ending this with intentional living, like how to be intentional about, about all of that, right, we've explored through multiple books what it means, what different people think it means to be happy, and different explorations of that, and we're wrapping up the very, very end of intentional living today and I I like that as the end cap to this year of happiness because it feels like okay now, now that we know you know, we know what we know now.
Speaker 1:How are we going to take this forward into next year? How are we going to take this forward into our life? And no, no, it's just. It's been like I can't believe we're here, but like it's been a just a really an amazing journey to go through.
Speaker 2:It's been awesome, and I remember the day you're talking about when we were saying what books do we really want to do next year, and I remember saying I just want to be happy and I want to be at peace. Were there days in this calendar year that I lacked happiness and peace? Oh, 100%. In fact, there were some significant things that I had to maneuver around throughout the year, but I will say with confidence, significant things that I had to maneuver around throughout the year, but I will say with confidence that everything that I experienced this year, I was able to experience it with more intentionality, open-mindedness and embracing what happiness means, despite circumstances, despite obstacles, despite sadness, despite things that could shake you, because happiness isn't about everything being perfect. It's about solving for those things in the moments that you're in.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I took away from this last epilogue of the chat of the chapters for intentional living is that john says that significance he said this to us before in some trainings that, sam, you and I have been a part of, which is that success doesn't satisfy anymore once you've tasted significance in life, and so many people I know have just been on a quest for success, success at work, whatever they define that success to be, but when you have found a way to have significance, which is happiness, joy, peace, contentment, relationships, all those things we've been learning this year, that it's not about a destination, it's about a daily thing is the way that John describes it. So if you can find those things in every one of your moments that you're living, that at the end of the day, when you put your head down on the pillow, you could say this day was a day well lived, because you'll never get to repeat it again yeah, yeah, and it's funny because I think that that that is so very true.
Speaker 1:Like success feels very shallow once you've tasted what significance looks like right.
Speaker 1:Like I think about that, like as I'm thinking about how my business has evolved this year and you know where I thought I would be versus where I am in a lot of different ways and the journey that you know that's taken right. And, like, you and I are both coaches. We help people do things and so I do a lot of career coaching Now which, like you, would ask me two years ago not the thing I thought I would have done. But I love helping people like create these self led careers, having people take control back of their narrative, of their journey, of what they're doing. And you know, I can look at it through both of the lenses. One of success, like what were the successes of this year? It's like well, I can look at it through both of the lenses.
Speaker 1:One of success, like what were the successes of this year? It's like well, I had multiple clients find new jobs, you know, create this sense of security for themselves. You know, really like make a significant change in their life, and that was all well and good. But the thing that really sticks with me isn't the success of oh, I had clients who were looking for a new job and they got a new job, like that's great, wonderful, absolutely the results you want. But it's the journey that the person went on right, it was the mindset changes that they went through, the value they found in themselves right, the branding that they put onto their identity. Right, as we did the exploration, right, like it's changed people's lives to go through these journeys and that's significant, right, like those are the that's helping people, that's making a difference in somebody's life, and the success of the check boxes of, yeah, we did the things we meant we set out to do, like pales in comparison to significantly helping somebody change their thought process, change their self-esteem, change the way that they see themselves, the way they set up their trajectory Right. And so, like I found this to be very true just in this year for myself, not to mention, like all the things I think about, like, like in my life of what were successes and what were, you know, touches of significance, and you're right, they just it pales in comparison when you really get into significance and and john says in this epilogue that significance is not a destination thing, it's a daily thing and I think that, like you could switch out the word significance for happiness too, if we're doing our whole theme here, right, like that's one of the big things we learned, like happiness, significance, these, you know, soul level, deep things that we strive for are not things we're going to get to. I'll be happy when I'll feel significance, when you know we hit this milestone. Those things are all fleeting and that's what all books that we read really were telling us.
Speaker 1:Bring this into your daily life. Find these moments to make a difference. Find these activities that help you make a difference. Solve the equation in a way that every day touches your life and helps you, you know, really embrace the fact that these are daily things. This is a now, this is a do it now. This is a live in the now type of activity and I think, like that's just, that's one of like. If there's one thing somebody takes away from the whole year, it's do it now. Today is the day today, today is the moment. Today is when you're happy. Today is when you find significance if you're doing it right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think another key point is what he says right after that, which is to live your life without regret. It's interesting that this is at the end of the book because he talks about a conversation that he had with coach John Wooden. He talks about a conversation that he had with coach John Wooden and man Sam. We anticipated that 2024 was going to be a good series. We didn't know what it would be like till we started it, but we said this also in 2023, that it seemed like every book in the order that the books came were so divinely purposefully in the order that they came in. Yeah, and in this year we unfortunately lost pat williams, who's the author of the book we explored last year. Coach wooden, um by Pat Williams.
Speaker 2:And so Coach Wooden, who also has since passed on, but was a great mentor to John, told John Maxwell I don't have any regrets in life, and John said that the answer shocked him, which I found interesting because I don't really think that John Maxwell, either, has regrets in his life, and what John Wooden told John Maxwell was that I make every decision with a pure heart, the right heart. If you asked me if all of my decisions were good I'd tell you they weren't, but you didn't ask me that. You asked if I regret any. I thought that was so just wise and profound to say that you live your life and live your days without regrets and that maybe not every day is exactly perfect. But that goes back into what we learned with mo is that some things happen in our lives that are not happy, but there's still a way to solve for your own happiness through those experiences yeah, and I think it comes down to giving yourself grace.
Speaker 1:Right, like you did the best you could with the information that you could at the time. Right, like regret is something to let go of entirely. You cannot be holding on to regret and happy at the same time. Those two things cannot coexist. You have to reconcile those feelings of regret.
Speaker 1:And I love, I love John Wooden's perspective on this. Right. He said you see, john, I did the very best that I could at that time to make each decision. Is there anything else you can expect from yourself? And then you know, john Maxwell says you know, we all go through life doing the best we can. We can't legitimately offer more than we know. We can't perform at a higher level than our experiences have taught us or come to a greater place than our expertise has brought us to right.
Speaker 1:And I think that, like, if you think about that through the lens of like letting go of regret and giving yourself the grace of like you didn't know better, like how many of us are still like wake up at night, or like, as we're trying to fall asleep, thinking about things from high school, right, like you know, 2030, 40 years, and you're still thinking about like oh, there's that one cringy conversation that I had right. It's like, oh gosh, like I have though I have some of those right, but it but for me, like it comes on the heels of I was doing the best I could with the best of what I had at the time and were some of these things very much the wrong decision, absolutely. Like, definitely, but I don't regret it. I'm like right, I carry those lessons with me now. Those lessons have created this space for me to not make mistakes that I would have in the past. And so I think that like I love, I think I almost highlighted this whole section. It's a little, it's like a page and a half, but I'm so much highlighted in it just because I just I love that that thought process Right and especially as we're thinking about living intentionally is sometimes we don't step into action, we don't step into the space we should because we're afraid we'll regret something.
Speaker 1:What if this doesn't work out? It's like it's that quote of what if I fall? But somebody comes back and says, but what if you fly right? Like you can't live in this fear, and I think regret of the past holds us back so often, in fear of repeating mistakes in fear of doing whatever. And you have to like, live in this space of going to give myself praise. I'm just doing my best, right, like? I'm going to assume positive intent of the people around me of myself, that I'm trying, I'm doing the best with what I got. Am I gonna get it right now? No, but I'm gonna learn and I won't make the same mistake twice, or maybe I will, and I won't make it a third time because I needed that lesson twice. Apparently. Right, like, whatever, it doesn't matter, um, but I, you know, I love that, especially as we're thinking about like, like, do it now. Right. This is John's encouragement as he ends this book of go out, go do it, make it happen. It's a daily thing. And don't regret. Don't regret what you're doing. Don't live in fear of regret either.
Speaker 2:It's about choice, isn't it? Choice to do something or to not do something. I like when you were talking about the what if, because you know that's the theme of the book that I'm trying to write, which is around changing the punctuation in our lives. You can have a question mark or you can have an exclamation mark and you can say, like you just described well, what if I fall? Or what if this happens? Or what if that happens? Or what if this person thinks this or that person thinks the other thing? Well, what if they don't? And so the idea is, if you don't take action, intentional action, live with anticipation and do things that matter with people that also want to do things that matter in this life, then what is life worth living then for? And so John ends the book, really, by asking some really pointed questions. I encourage you to get the book because he asks those are areas where you could take a deeper dive, introspective look. Now you can do it on your own, sure, but it's so much easier to do it with a coach or an accountability partner or someone that you trust to be able to navigate how you can keep living intentionally but also take action on your intentions, because I remember it wasn't long after John wrote this book that there was sort of a question around well, aren't intentions just ideas and not really actions? And he described it in such a great way that intentional living isn't about stopping at the intention. It's about living the intentions out loud, which is the point of our podcast living out loud the pages that we have on these books. You have tons of books on your shelf, as do I. We can have an intention to read them and never do anything about it, but intentional living proposes that you are going to take them off the shelf, you're going to read them, you're going to digest them and you're going to live them.
Speaker 2:And I think for me, sam, as I look back at all the books we had this year, going to live them. And I think for me, sam, as I look back at all the books we had this year, one of the things I'm so grateful for is that not only had I already read all these books, but I got to read them a second time. I got to hear your thoughts, through your lens, of what you were living out loud. I got to listen to our episodes after we recorded them to think about why did I say what I said and did I really mean it and did I take action the way I said I did on that particular episode? This has been a super cathartic and learning growth time for me, especially because that's all I wanted. This year was just to be happier, and I can say that there were things in my life that really threw curveballs at me this year, but at the same time, I'm so much better for it, for the things that we've learned together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree and I think that this journey has really culminated to living intentionally right, like taking the reins of happiness, you know, in your control and doing that intentionally. And I love that. I love that dialogue on you know, like, cause there's the quote of you know the road to hell is paved with good intentions, like I meant to do all of these things and I never did it and I didn't end up where I wanted to right, like ended up in not a great place, but the it's the living part. That is. That is the key here. Right, it's the intentional part is good, but you have to get to the doing. And that's really like how this book ends of go forth and do, like, go out in the world and make it happen. And he says today, like go out and do something today that's going to, you know, push you in that direction, make you know, make that move. And, like you said, it's much easier when we do it with other people. It's much easier to do it with somebody who's going to help us say did you do the thing? You said you were going to do the thing, to do it right? And and living in that in that sense of that sense of space and and this year has been, yeah, such a journey and you had read all the books. I had read none of these books as we went through them. So if you haven't been with us the whole year, we had four, here they are.
Speaker 1:We started with the how of happiness, which was all the science behind happiness and what really truly does make things happy. So if you are very scientifically minded, like, that's the book for you because it's got, you know, surveys you can take for yourself, like you can measure your happiness level based on research and you can increase it. I think, as we did it, like I saw a significant increase, like percent increase, on my, you know, happiness levels as we went through and lived that book out loud. Then we moved into Soul for Happy by Mo Goddard, which is he comes up with a happiness equation and then how to keep that equation in balance, and you know, do that every day. And then we listened to Gretchen Rubin's journey on the happiness project. She set out to basically live the first two books out loud, plus she did a lot of research into happiness. But really it was one woman's journey on how she brought happiness into her daily life and she was already a happy person, but she wanted to really be intentional about that. And now we already a happy person, but she wanted to really be intentional about that. And now we're here, we are with our intentional living on a way to take, you know, to live in a way that you, you mean to and you want to insert the things that you want to insert.
Speaker 1:And if you haven't read the books, or if you haven't, you haven't read the books, go read the books for sure. If you missed any of our episodes or missed any of these series, go back there on all of our things. Definitely, I would highly recommend these books to anybody who's wanting to just I don't know live a life that is more joyful, deeper, broader, better, right like I. Just, I think these are the. These are the books. Have, I think, changed my life? For sure, I think they've changed yours as well, as we've gone through this, but I don't know. So I guess, denise, the question is, as we are wrapping up this series on happiness and we're wrapping up 2024, which still feels crazy to me what are the pieces of this year that we've learned that are living rent free in your head? What are the pieces that you just keep coming back to and thinking about number one.
Speaker 2:I wish it wasn't over because there's a lot of books that you can get on Amazon or at the bookstore Barnes and Noble or wherever. But this series was so important because we can get caught up in reading about leadership development books or just fantasy books of sorts, but these books are about how to change your heart and your mind and your life, and so I think a couple things I would have said that live rent free in my head. So the how of Happiness that was a tough book because it truly was written like a college manifesto almost, like if you read it you need to be prepared to really have quiet time to read that book. But yet when we read it and we applied it, it was so healthy and it was just so good to be able to see the things that matter the most to us. So that would be the first book for me which was being able to identify what matters most to me. The second thing that lives in my head is in the solve for happy is that, as much as he talked about the equation of it, what struck me the most about it was his love for his family and his love for his son, who he lost, and so what doesn't escape my mind is thinking about my kids and trying to make sure that every day I'm at my best, healthy self, so I can be at my best happy self for my kids and that they can then see through my life something that I can leave behind as a legacy. And in the case for Mo, the legacy came from the life of his son maybe not the reverse and so I think what sticks out for me with him is that, no matter what you're going through, what you're experiencing, or if you lose something or someone that you really love, that happiness is still possible. So that's what I took away from that one the Happiness Project. What I loved about that one was it was a really raw and transparent look at this person's life with her story. I mean, it was just her story, but we were able to take her story and share our stories, and I hope for our listeners that they were able to think of their own stories as well. So that's what I really took away from the happiness project intentional living.
Speaker 2:It's hands down in my top 10 of all time favorite books that are on my bookshelf and that's hard to say because I have not only hundreds.
Speaker 2:I literally went and gave away 100 plus books this weekend.
Speaker 2:There are still hundreds more that I need to take off the shelf, but this one, it will always stay on my shelf and I think it's because when I first read this book as I shared at the beginning of our series I did this book with my kids, and they were in elementary school and now they're both in college, and so being able to revisit the things that brought me joy and happiness through this book the first time around looked a little bit differently for me the second time around, and I can tell that it stretched my thinking, it stretched my growing, and what I love about the end of this is it talks about living a life of significance, and I won't give any spoilers because we want you to come back next week, but we're going to be talking about how.
Speaker 2:2025 is an entire series of living a life of significance and meaningful things that matter and really being able to embrace, I think, beyond your work. And so this started out as a leadership podcast before we turned it into what's On your Bookshelf, and it was really just talking to leaders about how they live their life outside of behind their desk, but this has transformed into? How can we all holistically be different people than we are today, in the anticipation of something even better?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it comes down to like how can we lead the life that we want, right? It's less about maybe leading others, which I think happens by proxy, when you're leading yourself, right. I think the first like where you always have to start is with you, because that's, at the end of the day, the only thing you control is what, what decisions you make, what actions you take. And I think that if you're leading a life that is intentional, that is happy, then you can do that right, and next year will be a lot of like how do you get out of your own way? What are the things you need to do to make that happen? Because that's kind of the next step, right, like, we know foundationally what it takes to get to a life of happiness and of significance and that. But that doesn't mean there aren't problems, right, that doesn't mean there aren't. You know things, and I think that that's what I like.
Speaker 1:That's one of the big takeaways for me as we go through this happiness journey is, you know, living a happy, joyful life is not the absence of terrible, horrible, bad things happening, it's maintaining. It's being like, as mo says, like being able to get back to the default state of happiness despite everything. Right, it's sonia's research on in the how of happiness that you know 40 is in your daily actions. Only 10 of your happiness is what's happening to you at any given time. So you gotta any given time. So you got to get rid of those excuses. You have to get rid of this thought process that it's about what's happening to you and it's more about what's happening through you, through the things that you're, you know, intentionally doing. And there's a way to take this journey and make something significant out of it. Right, there's a way to take this ability to learn to lead yourself into happiness and to joy through your daily actions, to then become someone of significance for the people around you, for yourself, right, and I just I think it's such a beautiful journey and to me, I think like if I'm taking one thing away from the year, it's that happiness and significance are, like, fully within my control, based on what I do every day, right, which is how we ended the year with Atomic Habits. Right, it's what are you doing every day, what are those little things you know that build us into it and that's what truly leads us to it.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't mean there aren't problems. It doesn't mean there aren't obstacles coming our way. It doesn't mean there aren't. You know things that we have to. You know agree upon and do and decisions we have to make, and you know that's spoiler where we're headed next year. So, hoping that you all join us on the next adventure and next episode. We'll talk all about what's coming in 2025, what the theme is overall, how it all fits together, and give you the list of books that we're gonna explore, which I'm super excited about because we've started reading them. I haven't read any of them before this, so, again, it'll be a whole other year of new books to me, so I'm very excited.
Speaker 2:And we have some raw books coming Okay. So be prepared that next year's book lineup is nothing like you've seen it before. So suffice to say be prepared to be bold, be fierce, it's going to be a ride. A couple of the books are new on my shelf as well. I'm looking forward to it. So we have the next episode coming where we're going to share all that so you can be prepared and maybe even start reading over the holidays if you have some break time. But for today, my name is Denise Russo and, on behalf of my good friend, sam Powell, this has been, yet again, another episode of what's on your bookshelf.